humble and most devoted servants of all our correspondents without distinction. 32 This is such an outrage upon common sense, that it ought to be universally extirpated without mercy. "What is it, (said a Turkish lady to lady Mary Wortly Montague,) that wives, and mistresses in England reserve for their husbands and lovers, when they give, without blushing, the use of their lovely hands and lips to every common acquaintance!" The same most natural sentiment applies to our indiscriminate use of, My Dear, My Dear Lord, and Sir, and all our obedient and devoted humble servants; together with that abominable profanation of sacred friendship in our dear and sincere friends; and our expectations to have a dozen of friends invited by chance at a coffeehouse, or in the streets, to dine or to sup with us! To parody the famous speech of old Noll to the rump parliament ;---it is high time for us to put an end to their standing in these places, which they have rendered ridiculous by the want of common sense, and injurious to society by the destruction of significant expressions of real love and friendship. They have no more meaning in them than paper and pack-thread. Henry Home of Kames, the harbinger of a better age in Scotland, and who made himself to be felt all Europe over, was of this opinion, as will appear from the following letter to a peer of Scotland: Edinburgh, Feb. 1781. "This morning, when I was in bed, your servant got your paper addressed to me for the Philosophical Society, and I have read, with much pleasure, your short and pithy letter to myself, in your familiar stile, without any fashionable compliments. "Instead of loading every letter, good, bad, or indifferent, with a multitude of superlatives, and unmeaning galimatias, I wish you would' seriously set on foot a reformation in this business; first by setting the absurdity, like Perkin Warbeck, to turn the spit before you degrade it with formality; and then, that you would attempt to restore the noble simplicity that distinguished the correspondence among the ancient Greeks and Romans. "Taking it for granted that this will be in reality agreeable to your taste, as well as to mine, I return your tennis ball, by venturing to subscribe myself, simply, HENRY HOME." I shall conclude with a public letter of the acomplished earl of Orford, so much better known, all over the world, by the name of Horace Walpole Without concert, it approaches very nearly to the plan proposed, and it was addressed to the same person with that of the former. "I was honoured yesterday with your card, notifying to me the additional honour of my being elected an Honorary Member of the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland; a grace, my Lord, that I receive with the respect and gratitude due to so valuable a distinction; and for which I must beg leave, through your favour, to offer my most sincere thanks to that learned and respectable Society. My very particular thanks are still more due to your Lordship, who, in remembrance of ancient partiality, have been pleased, at the hazard of your own judgement, to favour an old correspondent, who can only now receive, and not bestow benefit with respect to the society that has adopted him. "In my best days I never could pretend to more than having flitted over some flowers of knowledge. Now worn out near the end of my course, I can only be a broken monųment, to prove that the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland are zealous to preserve even the least valuable remains of a former age, and to recompense all who have contributed their mite towards illustrating our common island. Berkeley Square, There is a modesty, simplicity, and beauty, in this letter, that requires no commentator. Quod verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum. HOR. Literary Olla. No. 6. (FOR THE BEE, APRIL 3. 1793.) Ecce super vacuis (quid enim fuit utile irasci?) The last and valedictory letter of Foulisius THUS I mark the day that was once counted the 15th, but now 26th, of the month of March, not without a tacit reproof to some folk that commonly omit to date their letters. I look upon the date of a friendly epistle as containing half the substance of its contents. I take pleasure in knowing the exact day when a friend bestowed some thought upon me, which he has testified by his writing to me. My thoughts are now taken up about my future hermitage, about which I have made some slight beginnings, deferring the finishing it for a month or two longer, till I get some cash for a quarry, out of which I am VOL. I. S to take the stones for its erection. Some new fancies about it have entered into my brain, that will make it exceed every thing I have either seen or read of. But before I go about to endeavour to entertain you about it, I must first endeavour to rectify your Philosophership's opinion about a matter of this kind, as you told me," that it was only once to look at it, and no more; all farther thoughts of such a thing expired with that single view." Be pleased, Ascanius, to observe, That when a person who has any imagination, and who has read about any thing of that kind, sees a well-contrived hermitage, it immediately recalls to his mind Montserrat, and whatever else, of that nature he has met with in Spenser, Tasso, Ariosto, and whatever else old Bards have sung 4 "Of fairies and enchantments drear, "Where more is meant than meets the ear." To me my hermitage * recalls several I have seen, with little chapels and small vineyards, and it recalls a hermit in Germany, who was a most accomplished pimp. These are the thoughts such things ought to produce in you, Ascanius; and I hope that what I have now written on the point, will open to you a new source of pleasure and reflection. At Colinton, near Edinburgh, now the seat of Sir William Forbes, Bart, of Pitsligo, |